We Are Not Playing Games With Coronavirus Testing – NCDC

The Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) has come out to say that nations have different approaches to test for coronavirus and Nigeria is not tampering with its testing approach in any way.

Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, Director-General of NCDC revealed this today in Abuja at a recent gathering.

According to him, NCDC is not playing games with testing and all tests involve a risk assessment to ensure it is appropriate for the person involved.

He added that NCDC will ensure the right people receive testing and at the right time in the country.

His words, “Every test involves a risk assessment to make sure it’s appropriate to test the person.

“We will continue to ensure we test the right people at the right time.”

“So that lessons learnt in states such as Lagos and Ogun can be applied elsewhere, because the challenges are similar across board.”

“I am confident that we will see results in the next few days.”

What do you think?

Coronaviruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds. In humans, coronaviruses cause respiratory tract infections that can be mild, such as some cases of the common cold (among other possible causes, predominantly rhinoviruses), and others that can be lethal, such as SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. Symptoms in other species vary: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea. There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human coronavirus infections.

Coronaviruses constitute the subfamily Orthocoronavirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, order Nidovirales, and realm Riboviria. They are enveloped viruses with a positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome and a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry. The genome size of coronaviruses ranges from approximately 27 to 34 kilobases, the largest among known RNA viruses. The name coronavirus is derived from the Latin corona, meaning “crown” or “halo”, which refers to the characteristic appearance reminiscent of a crown or a solar corona around the virions (virus particles) when viewed under two-dimensional transmission electron microscopy, due to the surface covering in club-shaped protein spikes.

Human coronaviruses were first discovered in the late 1960s. The earliest ones discovered were an infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two in human patients with the common cold (later named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43). Other members of this family have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 (formerly known as 2019-nCoV) in 2019. Most of these have involved serious respiratory tract infections.